Recent trends in modern communications device are rendering these devices smaller and more functional on an ever-increasing basis. Because many of these devices incorporate displays, one functionality being investigated and implemented in communications devices is the reception and display of television signals. In addition, modern phones have fairly large colour screens. In particular, devices such as mobile telephones are being provided with broadcast television tuners and large color displays for displaying received television signals to users.
Unfortunately, one recognized problem with the reception of television signals on portable devices is that it typically requires a relatively large sized antenna in order to cover the entire frequency band being used by available broadcasters. Successfully implementing an effective antenna for television signals has been a major obstacle in providing television signals to mobile telephones or other portable communication devices, where the size of the device is generally of primary or critical.
Prior attempts to solve this problem have used a single antenna for both communication (e.g., cellular communication) as well as reception of broadcast television signals. However, this solution has been ineffective in that the frequencies used for telephone communication and television broadcasts are quite different. Therefore, the single-antenna approach is unduly compromising and provides inferior performance for both communications and television reception. In order to increase performance in a single-antenna solution, additional circuitry and/or additional signal processing may be incorporated into the communication device. Unfortunately, this modified approach suffers from an increase in physical size. Additionally, increasing processing requirements for the portable device has the further disadvantage of decreasing usable battery life of the device. Another hurdle to the single-antenna approach results from the requirement of a ground plane in the device, which is a technical challenge to accomplish in connection with such small portable devices, such as mobile telephones, especially with respect to a television antenna.